Everyday Leadership Series (15) - Dalai Lama on Leadership

While the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk, does not often speak about business explicitly, choosing instead to focus on teachings about compassion and peace, he sounded a lot like an aging CEO preparing to pass the reins. Indeed, effective leadership is an underlying theme through his prolific teachings, which he also tweets about on a regular basis.

International managerial consultant Laurens van den Muyzenberg identified the business leadership undercurrent in the 1990s after he was hired to advise the Dalai Lama. Realizing the great potential in combining their respective expertise, van den Muyzenberg and the Dalai Lama co-authored The Leader’s Way, applying Buddhism to business practices.

“Most of my clients do face difficult ethical problems,” says van den Muyzenberg, who consults leaders. “It’s hard to find somebody with the kind of ethical prestige that [the Dalai Lama] has.”

Here we cull the Dalai Lama’s leadership tenets from his teachings, tweets, and The Leader’s Way.

Develop your view

The first part of The Leader’s Way two-part message is this: in order to lead, you must understand the reasons for our actions. As the Dalai Lama says, “The nature of our motivation determines the character of our work.” In business, this means thinking critically about the implications of any overarching objectives as well as the purpose behind daily procedures. It also means remaining aware of not only your own interests but the interests of all those you lead. Company-wide brainstorm sessions and cross-department collaborations are two ways to ensure everyone understands and agrees with the direction you are taking the company.

Establish the right conduct

Setting up widely-accepted business principles, however, is not enough. “I see so many companies with strong principles they fail to apply,” says van den Muyzenberg. In order to ensure your best intentions are consistently applied to your business’s practices, develop a system of regular progress reports and evaluations. 

Train your mind

The Dalai Lama describes the untrained mind like a monkey jumping around in a tree, excited, and unable to concentrate. Buddhists counter this cerebral activity by training their minds, or meditating. And while few CEOs are likely to start their mornings at their local Zen Center, the Dalai Lama maintains that a peaceful, well-trained mind is important for increasing quality of thought and decreasing irrational impulses. “The leader has to recognize when negative emotions like frustration, impatience, anger, lack of self-confidence, jealousy, greed start to influence his thought processes,” writes the Dalai Lama and van den Muyzenberg in the The Leader’s Way. “These negative thoughts and emotions not only can lead to wrong decisions but also waste mind energy.” Simple meditation techniques such as deep breaths, relaxing muscles, and controlled emotions might help even the busiest leaders keep composed at all times.

Focus on happiness

What about your company makes you happy? What makes you unhappy? By asking two such simple questions, a manager can discover how best to motivate his employees, persuade his customers, and support its shareholders. According to the Dalai Lama, happiness is the highest universal form of motivation. “We tend to forget that despite the superficial differences between us, people are equal in their basic wish for peace and happiness,” he says, via Twitter in November. Employee, customer, and shareholder satisfaction should take precedent over the bottom line. But, that does not mean sacrificing profits. “Some think happiness is a tradeoff for making money, but it’s not,” says van den Muyzenberg. “A happy company is a successful company. You are more invested in success when you care about where it comes from.”

Become interconnected

Buddhists believes in interconnectivity—the idea that people only truly exist in relation with other people. From a Buddhist perspective, business is a network for these connections, a huge spiritual organism that functions only when all these connections are realized. “The interconnected leader sees himself or herself as the generator of impulses into an interconnected system to realize the purpose of the organization,” writes the Dalai Lama and van den Muyzenberg, in The Leader’s Way. When an impulse—anything from a conversation to a presentation to a policy—reaches another individual, it triggers an idea and sets off a chain reaction for creative productivity. It is the leader’s job to manage and reinvigorate impulses among colleagues. But, interconnectedness is not only with relationships within a company but also relationships with clients, the customers, the financial community, and even competitors. 

Stay positive

It’s no secret running a business is hard. It’s easy for a small business owner or entrepreneur to worry about what could go wrong and prepare for the worst. But, instead, the Dalai Lama encourages a more optimistic approach to business. “Appreciate how rare and full of potential your situation is in this world, then take joy in it, and use it to your best advantage,” he tweeted last month. Every problem has a solution, and having the right attitude from the beginning may help you find it.

And when the going gets rough, look to the Dalai Lama’s example for inspiration. Van den Muyzenberg recalls: “The Dalai Lama once told me, ‘You could think I shouldn't be happy because I lost my country, I lost everything.  But I am a very happy person’.” 

As in any skill or trait, the ability to lead comes more easily for some than others. While there are those who are natural-born leaders, many develop the skills necessary to become a person of influence.

Great leaders understand the importance of a positive attitude in building strong and effective organizations. One’s outlook dictates a person’s response to the present and determines the quality of your future, it is a great influencer in a company’s culture.

Clearly there are personal benefits for the individuals as well as the team as a whole, I’ve outlined three below.

Lead With Attitude: Three Leadership Lessons from Dalai Lama

Helps to Achieve Business Goals. Persuading customers is much easier for a person with a positive attitude. Research studies have shown sales professionals who think positively have improved sales performance. If a person is optimistic about achieving goals and success, they are more prone to take action in order to achieve it. Positive thinking is conspicuous in an achiever.

Improves Team Morale. A leader’s attitude is infectious – whether in a positive or negative way. Conscious or not, your team looks to you to create a positive attitude in the workplace. When you’re in a meeting or facing a challenge, steer the conversation on teamwork and focus on solutions. More likely than not, your attitude will begin to affect change. Soon people will be drawn to you, not only because of your strong leadership, but because they can’t help but like being in the company of somebody positive.

Develops a sense of gratitude. While several factors go into optimism, cultivating a sense of gratitude can help maintain a more positive mood in daily life.  Thankfulness is one of the simpler routes to a greater sense of emotional well-being, higher overall life satisfaction, and a greater sense of happiness in life. People with a greater level of gratitude tend to have stronger relationships, less stress, resulting in increased health benefits.

This tweet from Dalai Lama sums up the best advice for leaders:

Appreciate how rare and full of potential your situation is in this world, then take joy in it, and use it to your best advantage.

Thanks for reading my blog.

Are you Leading?

Dr. Deepak A. Patil

CEO, Lead ThySelf